it certainly seems to be. if it were just a matter of noise, or discharging contaminated water, or waste gasses we're supposed to have rules for these things. any facility that does these things is supposed to adhere to them.
so the issue isn't about data centers at all, but the fact that we've decided to stop enforcing even minimal environmental standards.
water consumption is another one, we just haven't done a very good of realizing that its a limited resource and trying to manage it.
the other is raising electrical rates. it should just be a real problem to raise rates to pay for Capex for other non-residential customers.
those are all real issues. 'people are going to get screwed' is a culture war thing, particularly if their opinion seems to be against environmental regulation as a matter of course. if a data center isn't noisy and polluting, and doesn't impact water or electrical consumption, then there is no sane reason to be against it. there are data centers that use close loop cooling. there are those that don't effect your rates. there are ones that are not really close to residences.
